


Where Troubles Melt Like Lemon Drops: Five Places Lorne Ate Onion Rings

by executrix



Category: Angel The Series
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-29
Updated: 2011-04-29
Packaged: 2017-10-18 18:55:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/192135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wesley has some relationship problems with someone so...flamboyant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where Troubles Melt Like Lemon Drops: Five Places Lorne Ate Onion Rings

_Oh, Mary, it takes a fairy to make something pretty_ (Emory, in "The Boys in the Band")

1.  
Lorne gazed benevolently at the discussion, of next year's March Madness, swirling around the Black Table in the Wolfram & Hart cafeteria. (He didn't care much about sports, but he represented two basketball players.) Lorne wasn't sure if he belonged there, but he'd been invited often enough to reassure him.

He dipped an onion ring into tartar sauce. "Want me to warm those up for you?" one of the Broadcasting Telepaths said. Lorne shook his head. "They're good at…English beer temperature."

Lorne's eyes brightened when he saw Wesley, then the light dimmed as he realized that Wesley, tray o'tuna sandwich and all, was heading over.

"You don't have to sit here, you know," Wesley said brightly, stirring his container of chocolate milk with its flexible straw. "You're all welcome everyplace! We think everybody is the same! We're an Evil Opportunity Employer!"

Eyes were rolled all around the table, except for the Hup-Thorsh demon, whose eyes were rolled **down** the table. Lorne shrugged, wrapped them in a napkin, and gave them back to the Hup-Thorsh.

2  
Spike rotated the dish, examining the Onion Blossoms from all sides. He made some notes on a spiral-bound pad and snapped a picture with his camera phone, then started eating them because they're really only good piping-hot anyway. He was reviewing the place for his blog, _Pulling A Good Pint_. Lots of people just didn't understand the point of a vampire foodie blog, but Spike felt that if you didn't need to eat, there was no point in being arsed to unless you got something really good out of it.

"He's just so…well, if he let what's inside of him out, there wouldn't be a stage big enough. Or lights bright enough."

"I've known Wes a lot longer'n'you, and trust me, you wouldn't want him to be **less** inhibited. He was an unmitigated wanker then, 'spose he's mitigated a bit."

"Yeah," Lorne said. "And you were **on the other side.** , so maybe we shouldn't trust your perceptions of those days. It's just that…he's…"

"English?" Spike suggested.

"And look what it did for you. No, just…born too soon and started too late, I guess," Lorne said. He pushed the sunglasses down from the crown of his head to his nose (with a practiced bob to avoid the horns) and grabbed at his python windbreaker.

"Got to go," Lorne said.

"Oi, sorry what I said about your boy," Spike said.

"It's not just that," Lorne said, although he didn't think that anyone except him should say things like that about Wesley. "Charles and I have tickets tonight for the ballet."

"Poof's football, eh?"

"That's what **he** said. Also, once is enough, he said."

"If he's for a jig or a tale of bawdry or he sleeps, you'd think it'd be enough of a jig. What's on, then?"

"Les Sylphides."

"Oh, I know that one," Spike said. "What you get from too much Fokine around, innit?"

3  
"Dear **God** , you're not wearing that, are you?" Wesley asked, patting his tiny black bow tie to make sure it hadn't swelled in the ten minutes since he tied it. The whole point of a tuxedo, he felt, was to be an unobtrusive background for the ladies' gowns and jewels. In fact, he is now a little ashamed of the flourish of lilies-of-the-valley in his buttonhole.

"No, I just had it dry cleaned at the price of your first car because I want to wrap the trash in it," Lorne said, checking to see that there were no bare patches in the sequins of the lapels. He dropped the pants of the modest moss-green jersey suit he wore to work, briefly revealing boxer shorts with an allover print, "Too Big to Fail," and effortfully pulled up the purple panne velvet drainpipes of his tuxedo. Or, rather, pulled them up halfway, because it was easier to put on the frilled-front shirt then inch them up the rest of the way, strap on the cummerbund (Wesley, who does not approve, has not been asked for his assistance with this), and then top it all off with the drape-shaped jacket.

"Come on, our reservation is at eight," Wes said. He wasn't best pleased that, to get a table at a restaurant so fashionable that it not only had no sign on the door, it had no name and the reservations number was whispered in ROT-13, he had to pretend to be Lorne's personal assistant, because when he phoned as himself, he was offered a table at five or eleven, three months after the award ceremony.

It was a good thing they'd bothered to go, because one of Lorne's clients won an award for Best Second Album By Last Year's Break-Out Artist. "I'm proud to accept this on behalf of Kizzie Mondragon and her wife, Helaine Distelby," Lorne said. "Kizzie's on set in Outer Mongolia, filming the martial arts scenes for 'Little Lulu'."

The audience broke out into applause, and a few whistles.

"Kizzie and Helaine will do what they always do. Take the new experience and turn it into beautiful music."

The next day, reading the trades, Lorne saw a photo of "Wolfram & Hart's K-Swath [w/unknown man, left]" and patted the paper, thrilled by the pride tugging at the corners of Wes' eyes, photographed behind Lorne's back.

4  
Lorne could always tell from the slump of Wesley's shoulders if it had been a bad day. In this case, there was also a fine mist of something stuck to his eyeglasses.

Lorne turned down the stereo (he had been dancing along with "Get Happy," although he kept his pants on, he knew he didn't have the pins for the tuxedo-jacket-and-heels-only look) and waited for Wes to tell him what had happened. (Wolfram & Hart emulated the Madison Avenue motto, and expected the departments to eat their own dog food, which was not a bad description of what had happened when one of their lead scientists had beta-tested the teleporter. The whole Aquitar Project had been scrapped and written off, and Fred was under sedation.)

When Wes didn't say anything, Lorne handed him his martini and said, "There are some pakoras in the microwave."

"Those have **spices** in them, don't they?" Wes said. Lorne nodded, with a resentful snort.

"I don't know why you listen to that faggoty trash anyway," Wes said. "But at least it's better than your head-in-the-oven mix. Just get over it, Lorne. It's not the old days. You're…well, gay people…don't have to camp about being conspicuous. We…ah, it's possible to be normal. Just like everybody else."

Lorne's horns blushed a furious steel-blue. "I may be an old lady, but I ain't so easily assimilated. You know I don't rush into a fight…"

"Don't look at me, you seem to be doing all right now…"

"But I wish I got to this dimension fast enough to throw bottles at the cops at the Stonewall Inn. Because the first way I knew I was different was when I could hear the music in a place that didn't believe in music. That's what they used to say, you know? 'Is he **musical?'** That was what pulled me here, across the dimensions. I didn't need to come here to be Somewhere Over the Beige."

He was usually the one who got Josephined, but Lorne hoped that Wes would feel amorous (not an unusual response to a bad day at the office) so Lorne could say, talk to the stick up your ass, the dick ain't listening.

5  
It was Saturday, and they did laundry and went to the strip mall and by the time they got to the diner, it was four o'clock and they were tired and hungry and the booth was more full of Home Depot and Bed Bath and Beyond bags than it was with them and Lorne knew, he just **knew** what was going to happen, Wes was going to order something crunchy and even greener than him and then he was not only going to bogart the onion rings (a side order, no substitutions allowed with the Monte Cristo sandwich) but submerge them in ketchup.

Lorne flicked the levers turning the pages of the selections for the tiny tabletop jukebox, settling on nothing, until Wes stilled his hand, dug a couple of quarters out of his granitic khakis, and played "Moonglow."

Then he stood up, stretched out his hand, and he and Lorne slow-danced until their late lunch at teatime arrived.


End file.
